Yoko Taro is a Japanese game director and scenario writer, originally starting his career at Cavia,
where he is best known for his release of 2003's Drakengard. After Cavia became defunct, Taro moved to
Square Enix, where he has continued to release games in the Drakengard series and (the now more popular)
spin-off series, NIER. Taro has a disdain for being photographed, and as such is almost exclusively seen
wearing a mask of the character Emil from the NIER series in interviews, meetings and photo-ops.
Yoko Taro is well known for his subversive and unconventionaSl design and writing styles, both of which
are heavily present in the Drakengard and NIER games. He enjoys exploring darker themes and aspects of
humanity with a sincereity one might not expect, such as why people are driven to kill one another, or
how both sides of a conflict can be convinced they are the ones in the right.
He has described his method of writing a story as "backwards". In this he says he starts at the end of a
story, then plotting out important or impactful major beats that can lead a story to reach that
conclusion, and then filling in the rest last. In doing so he hopes to create stories that leave an
emotional impact on the player, as opposed to simply traveling from plot point A to plot point B.
